Case Studies

UX/GUI/UI: DHS - Department of Human Services, City of Philadelphia

Client's Voice:

"... the most important aspect of MBPS's role has been their invaluable skills and high level of expertise in problem solving as it relates to highly sophisticated and complex systems. MBPS was an integral part of the website project."

- Liza Rodriguez, Communications Director


MBPS provided DHS with a range of IT professional services including Project Planning and Management, GUI/UI design and development (intranet and internet portal websites including Focus Group surveys, Web Site Systems Integration, and Web Site Training and Orientation.


This case study is both a description of E-Gov solutions and GUI design and development.


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Challenge:

To establish quickly a clear message and open work process for all DHS user/staff including stakeholders and partner agencies. To help explain why people should use and interact with a new Intranet website. To establish and build an Intranet in a relatively short time period.


Other challenges were:

  • Achieve required service levels. To effectively meet the needs for which you are installing your intranet. These include the following major "user services:"
    • Information sharing and management
    • Communication and collaboration
    • Navigation
    • Application access

  • Maximizing the existing support infrastructure. Maintaining an intranet leverages and builds on the skills and knowledge of your existing network personnel. Rather than bring in a new group of administrators, you should train the people who are already familiar with the unique features of your network.

  • Reduce administrative costs. Phasing out proprietary, non-Internet-based products in favor of widely adopted, open standards-based solutions saves you time and money. You no longer need to manage multiple directory systems, email gateways, and document management systems. A single, open architecture is much easier to implement and support than multiple, proprietary legacy systems.

  • Create Interactive presentation of policies. This can not only build more understanding, but record that the employee successfully completed the process can be a legal defense, might cut insurance costs - benefit is real understanding, not just physical distribution.

Strategy:

To design and build an intranet website effectively changing the way the entire organization does their work flow process. By creating an entire marketing and pr campaign along with getting key staff supervisors involved right from the beginning of the project, enabling immediate DHS staff/user input and open communication through out the entire process.


Solutions:

MBPS created an Intranet designed to foster teamwork, support collaborative work relations, improve communication, reduce costs associated with paper output (printing), distribution time (single distribution of forms to multiple sources simultaneously), and increase overall Agency efficiency and productivity.


DHS employees became able to share access to agency information and databases allowing work environments that support on-demand learning opportunities enabling staff and social workers to exercise more control in meeting their professional development requirements on time.


Benefits:

  • Increased response time between administrators and employees
    • Save Cost � increase productivity

  • Savings on printing, collating, and distribution of paper-based documents

  • Reduce administrative costs

  • Avoid mistakes of using out of date data and wrong versions of documents

  • Finding information is made simpler
    • Save Cost � increase productivity

  • Immediate answer to a client or worker that has an immediate need

  • Immediate access to standard forms, telephone directories, client data

  • Facilitates internal (DHS) productivity by centralizing employee data, quickly searching and receiving needed information.

Conclusion:

Due to a successfully developed and implemented marketing and pr campaign to DHS staff and social workers, MBPS was able to achieve a 50+% user adoption rate after two weeks of deploying the intranet application online. Project Management and effective communication and orientation with staff were key ingredients in providing a successful outcome for the DHS project.


IT Advisory services : BRT - Board of Revision of Taxes, City of Philadelphia

Client's Voice:

"I have used this new website a couple of times and found it to be really super!!"


To enable the BRT to retire its legacy Mainframe [VSAM] software system and to be able to achieve its upcoming mandate to provide 100% full valuation of all Philadelphia Real Property.

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Challenge:

The project offered many challenges. Early on it was determined that in order to ensure the success of the Full Value Project, the VSAM data system maintained by the BRT, along with core business objectives supported by the current VSAM data system, had to be converted, integrated, and transformed in order to install and implement a new computer assisted mass appraisal (CAMA) system. MBPS would need to identify best process in order to keep the various interconnections between the core BRT system and other connected systems functioning correctly during this migration.


Strategy:

MBPS immediately performed exploratory needs and technical analysis of the current BRT systems, applying software architecture principles including a pattern based integration analysis, which was grounded in a previously discovered understanding of the BRT�s business objectives in the design evaluation criteria targeted, and that accurately capture the internal and external constraints on the system.


MBPS would then an inventory of integration end points, developing a �domain object model� to group the hundreds of end points into functional sets, applying software pattern analysis to this domain object model, extracting Project Requirements from this patterned model, and identifying specific structured integration environment capabilities needed to satisfy the defined Project Requirements.


Solutions:

MBPS identified and described the key processes which represent the business processes of the BRT. We then looked at these processes from an information technology point of view, identifying the interfaces between systems. We then grouped the processes and their component parts into three separate categories: CoreAccount Systems Interfaces, Non-CoreAccount Interfaces, and Workflow Interfaces.

  • Perform a Business and IT Gap Analysis relating to the (CAMA) data integration.
  • Define the need to integrate BRT data migration efforts with key city agencies and workflow.
  • Support city wide SOA standards and platforms for communications between BRT and other city agencies.

Benefits:

  • Use of enterprise wide data standards and consolidated reusable components.
  • Development of detailed technical specifications prior to commencement of development.
  • Requirement of strong QA and testing in full development cycle.
  • Developed meaningful SLAs with the city�s Information Services department.
  • Helped create and use formal Deployment and Change Order Processes.

Conclusion:

After initial evaluation, Business Continuity was found to be the key critical business requirement for the client to be able to move forward with their project. By helping to improve the business process, proceeding with a staged migration approach and identifying potential risk factors, the MBPS team was able to provide a solid well founded project approach to move forward on the conversion and integration of data into the new CAMA system.

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Client's Voice:

"I have used this new website a couple of times and found it to be really super!!"


To build an online enterprise database solution that is capable of returning results quick and efficiently. The biggest hurdle was migrating three decades worth of data into a more robust database schema/design.

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Challenge:

MBPS needed to find solutions to:

  • The Migration of over 600,000 property records from the BRT�s Mainframe system.
  • The Migration of over a million data fields.
  • Decrease online usage and dependency to the BRT mainframe system.
  • Optimize new database and systems to be able to serve thousands of records quickly and efficiently.
  • Utilize middleware program to help translate records between many systems.
  • Create a scalable standardized database; allowing flexibility, expandability, ease of use, and availability.
  • Clean up data going to the new BRT database.
  • Write smart logic triggers encompassing the BRT business rules.
  • Optimize full data loads from mainframe system (typically taking over 12 hours) to less than 5 hours.
  • Plan/Build a low cost solution without compromising performance, stability, or efficiency.
  • Allowing the BRT to have no interruptions in their business operations.

Strategy:

Learn how the BRT conduct it�s business operations, which was accomplished in a IT Business Analysis researched and published by MBPS. This was extremely important to have done first for every aspect of the BRT mainframe data derives from the business rules that the users of the system inherit and put in. Without this understanding the culture and the data made little sense.


Main objectives were as follows:

  • Analyze current BRT business rules.
  • Define old and new systems and the data.
  • Create new rules for engaging data.
  • Create database triggers capable of properly scoring data.
  • Build development and test platforms.
  • Automate all data loads.
  • Create security of failure through system clustering.
  • Create a fail safe solution through data clustering.

Solutions:

  • Build a database upon the backbone of Oracle systems.
  • Create a strong logical database schema, through the analysis of business rules.
  • Migrate BRT data from the VSAM mainframe, into the new database with the use of smart triggers.
  • Run integrity checks on all data by comparing records migrated to the system.
  • Create dummy database for the purpose of testing and development.
  • Put redundant systems in place, creating a cluster of databases with the intent to take on operations if the main database fails.

Benefits:

  • BRT database availability uptime is 100%,24 hours a day.
  • Clean reliable data.
  • Quick data returns for online applications.
  • Better schema design, allowing for fast development of applications relying on the data.
  • Higher Security Standards.
  • Over 92% Performance over the previous system.
  • Easy to maintain database.
  • Portability and Affordability.

Conclusion:

The end result of the project was an enterprise level database solution. This successful project set as a shinning example to the City of Philadelphia and its other departments on how to accomplish a complex project with good project management, good SDLC process and team oriented communication. The citizens, real-estate agents, property developers, and BRT staff have seen greater improvements in there own productivity and workflow thanks to the accurate information that is now available to all.


Application Design : Advocacy Associates - Washington, DC


Client's Voice:

"Your developers are Brilliant.... I want you to know that this database is already making life about 1,000 times better. Thanks!"

- Stephanie Vance, The Advocacy Guru


The Advocacy Associates (AA), is a for profit organization working for non-profits, focusing on the scheduling and management of communication and political access resources for its clients. MBPS provided AA with Database modifications, Online access to an Event Calendar application and Project Planning and Management.


Challenge:

The project goal was to modify and improve their current database tables and allow Advocacy Associates to provide more detailed reports to their clients, provide sign in accessibility to update calendar events, and make the overall scheduling and reporting process more efficient.

  • To integrate with an existing MS Access database with custom-built interfaces.
  • To integrate the current database which is kept on a local LAN with remote access through a third party vendor.
  • To develop a bridge to the internet and allow clients to view reports.
  • To be able to upload information easily to the event calendar (as opposed to hand typing it in)
  • To have pass code access for making changes to the calendar.
  • To allow clients makes a change to the online schedule and have a way to "flag" the event so that the client can feed it back to the database.
  • To be able to slice and dice the data by any of the fields in the database.

Strategy:

  • To make sure all development modifications are compatible to their current legacy system.
  • To develop and create all requirements in module components in separate .NET executable code.
  • To create all web based programming in ASP.NET and IIS.

Solutions:

AA needed several solutions to improve their database and their ability to access reports and calendar events online. MBPS assessed their current process and current systems in place and came up with an appropriate course of action to meet their business requirements and no profit budget. Below is a list of the solutions and deliverables requested by AA:

  • Develop .NET Executable code for flexible integration.
  • Web components including web pages for calendar and online access.
  • Modify MS access reports & tables for flexible functionality.
  • Develop a mail merge module to allow for easy distribution.
  • Document mapping requirements to MBPS solution.
  • Help Documentation for each software Deliverable.

Database Modifications:

  1. Create Schedule Tables Modifications.

  3. Create a program which generates meeting requests letters to senate/rep offices listing all members attending. The program will automatically generate all letters and save them to a directory in MS Word format.

  5. Create a program which shows a progress report of participants with less then 3 (customizable number) meetings with information based on the requirements document.

  7. Create individual Report Modifications by adding new data fields to expand reporting functions.

  9. Create online access for staff and clients to a calendar of events web page that will be directly linked to MS Access (no uploading needed), allowing staff members to update calendar events automatically.
    1. Password access to add events to calendar by client.
    2. Client changes (Will be directly updated to the database, no flagging mechanism)

Benefits:

These solutions allowed Advocacy Associates to provide more detailed reports to their clients, provide sign in accessibility to update calendar events, and make the overall scheduling process more efficient. The work enabled them to provide more detailed data requested by their current clients and allowed them to acquire new clients through better information and services.


Conclusion:

By defining the scope of services necessary to meet the Advocacy Associates needs and requirements, MBPS was able to finish the project within the tightly defined project schedule time frame. The project was delivered on time and on budget allowing AA to launch the upgraded database, giving their clients the continued good service that is expected.